Author Archives: sudestasie

In 1939, Phạm Duy Khiêm volunteered to enlist in the French army, the first and only Vietnamese colonial subject to do so. Before the war, he had studied in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the École normale supérieure, and had already begun to establish himself as an important francophone intellectual and writer. His military service was cut short by France’s surrender, but it nonethelessContinue reading “New publication by Karl Britto: ‘Madame, je ne suis pas une jeune fille’”

In this evocative memoir, Kim Lefèvre recounts her childhood and adolescence growing up in colonial Viet Nam. As a little girl living with her Vietnamese mother, she doesn’t understand the reactions of others toward her, their open mistrust, contempt, and rejection. Though she feels no different from those around her, she comes to understand that to Vietnamese sheContinue reading “Recent publication by Jack Yeager: Kim Lefèvre’s White Métisse”

Alexandra Kurmann and Tess Do contributed themed bio-bibliographical vignettes on the Vietnamese-Francophone writers Linda Lê, Anna Moï and Kim Lefèvre to the encyclopaedic edited volume on modern cultural production entitled Le grain de la voix dans le monde anglophone et francophone, whose title alludes to interviews with the theorist, Roland Barthes. The contributions allow for Vietnamese Diaspora writers’ voices and their diverse timbres to be recognised and heard alongside their artistic contemporaries. In particular, the vignettes reveal respectively the liminal, multidisciplinary, and translational qualitiesContinue reading “Alexandra Kurmann and Tess Do contribute to Modern French Identities series”

In his forward to Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence, Nicholas Kristof celebrates the Cambodian sex-trafficking survivor for embodying “the resilience, courage, and nobility of the human spirit.” Kristof, a journalist for The New York Times, was among Mam’s most enthusiastic champions until an article published in Newsweek in 2014 challenged the veracity ofContinue reading “New publication by Leslie Barnes: Nicholas Kristof as Global Savior”